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The Lord’s Prayer

by revealingtruthtoday on October 24, 2013

When I wake up every day, I try to always pray the Lord’s Prayer in the morning. The Lord’s Prayer is found in Matthew 6. It says:

“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”

I have prayed this prayer many times over the years, but I just noticed some things about it the other day (which must be why the Bible is referred to as the “Living Word” – it comes alive and keeps revealing more and more). I noticed that the prayer begins and ends with praise. It begins, “Hallowed be thy name”, and it ends with, “For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, for ever.”So, the requests we make known to God (our prayer) is sandwiched in between praise to our holy God. This also ties in with the scripture of how we enter into the presence of God. Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”

Something else I noticed – the Lord’s Prayer is very balanced. Even though He is more worthy of praise than we are to make requests unto Him, He allows us to pray in a way that is for our benefit. It helps us to recognize our total dependence upon Him. The prayer makes reference to “us” and “our” essentially 4 times and “thy” and “thine” 4 times. For example purposes, I will show you the prayer with the emphasis on this balance below (reference to God is in RED; reference to us is in BLUE):

The prayer says, “Our Father which art in heaven,Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”

Sure, God wants us to make our requests made known unto Him; but we must also remember that we are in the presence of a holy God who is worthy or our praise. The Lord’s Prayer balances this out in a perfect way. It also teaches us to take one day at a time. It says, “Give us THIS DAY our daily bread.” We should never boast about tomorrow, for we are not promised that. This is further echoed in the book of James (chapter 4). It says, “Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. “ Notice this scripture says that we should say, “if the Lord is willing” – this also echoes the Lord’s Prayer when we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

The Lord’s Prayer is known as the “model prayer” for Christians. While keeping with the ideas of the Lord’s Prayer, let your personal requests be made known unto the Lord. Praise Him in a way that is sincere and from your heart of gratitude. After all is said and done, the point of it all will be to make much of our Lord.

3 responses to “The Lord’s Prayer”

Great blog! Yes, the prayer takes on new meaning when it’s broken down like that. it has ALWAYS been one of my favorite prayers. I think too many of us (including me) dwell on the ‘tomorrow’ instead of the ‘today’..